The smart home industry faces a significant interface challenge: controlling devices often involves cumbersome steps like searching through apps, dealing with unreliable voice assistants, or struggling with smart displays that don’t quite meet expectations.
These frustrations often lead users back to traditional methods, like using wall switches. Apple is attempting to address these issues by releasing an “AI wall tablet for home control” next year, which will serve as a hub for its Apple Home platform. This device will allow users to manage smart devices like lights, locks, and cameras while adding additional features such as video calling.
Apple’s increased focus on the smart home is long overdue. Over the past decade, the company’s HomeKit platform has largely been neglected, while competitors such as Amazon and Google have made substantial progress in this space.
Recently, Apple has shown renewed interest in home automation, partly due to its involvement in the development of Matter, a new connectivity standard for smart homes. This shift comes at a crucial time for Apple as it looks to find the next major product category to drive growth, making smart home innovation a key area of focus.
The new product, likely called the HomePad, will enter the challenging smart display market. These devices, originally created to complement voice assistants, have evolved into multifunctional gadgets but often struggle to perform well in any one area.
Combining a variety of features—voice control, security cameras, music streaming, and photo frames—smart displays typically lack the ability to excel at any of them. Apple’s HomePad aims to offer a more focused approach, allowing users to control smart home devices while still providing features like video calling and security monitoring.
The HomePad is expected to be a compact, six-inch tablet that can be mounted on a wall or docked with a speaker. It will include a built-in security camera and proximity sensors that adjust the interface based on user interaction. The device will also offer standard features like music streaming, video calling, and smart home controls.
However, smart displays on the market today often suffer from issues like underpowered hardware, complicated setup processes, and difficult programming for average users. High-end smart home tablets can provide professional-level control but require technical expertise, which most consumers lack. Apple’s challenge will be simplifying these processes to make the device accessible to the average person.
For Apple to succeed in the smart display market, it must apply its signature simplicity to the interface. The key to success will be creating an intuitive system that blends voice and touch controls seamlessly.
This would represent a major improvement over current smart displays, which struggle to balance both interaction methods effectively. Given Apple’s history of developing user-friendly interfaces, such as iOS, tvOS, and watchOS, it has the potential to create a product that makes controlling a smart home much easier and more intuitive.
One of Apple’s biggest obstacles is improving Siri, its voice assistant. Although Siri performs well for basic tasks, it is significantly behind competitors like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant, especially in smart home control. To make the HomePad a success, Siri needs to become much smarter, able to understand contextual commands and anticipate user needs.
Reports indicate that Apple is working on a more advanced version of Siri, but it may not be ready until 2026. This delay presents a challenge, as the effectiveness of the HomePad will largely depend on the capabilities of Siri. Nevertheless, Apple’s long-term vision for a smarter Siri, powered by AI, could eventually create a much more capable voice assistant for controlling the smart home.
